


Tonight You're a Stranger

by tiniestawoo



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Gen, Grief/Mourning, New York AU, Police Station, Pre-Canon, Self Loathing, Sex Worker Derek Hale, sex as self harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:34:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26545315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiniestawoo/pseuds/tiniestawoo
Summary: “Hi Laura. My name is Detective Lynne Brooks of the New York Police Department. I’m sorry to call you so late at night.”Laura frowned. “It’s no problem.”“Laura, I’m at the 8th precinct and I have your brother here. He’s refused to give us his name but he did give us yours.”--Or the one where Derek's been doing sex work while he and Laura were in New York, and Laura had no idea.
Relationships: Derek Hale & Laura Hale
Comments: 16
Kudos: 67
Collections: Laura Hale Appreciation Week 2020





	Tonight You're a Stranger

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!! 
> 
> This was written for Laura Hale Appreciation Week 2020's Theme of: The Missing Years. I have a lot of thoughts about this potentiality, and love to play in the regime of canon-compliant! If you'd like to come discuss the head canons that built this particular story, I'd love to chat about them!!
> 
> Also, shout out to Julia/luulapants for assistance with rationing my tears because I might have just wanted to cry the entire time.  
> 
> 
> Come see me on [Tumblr!](https://tiniestawoo.tumblr.com/)

Derek glanced down at the hole in his jeans – Laura’s jeans, really – and ran his finger around the edge of it. His eyes drifted from there to the floor. The carpet was dirty, and he decided not to try and figure out what each of the scents were that he could smell in the police precinct. The couch he was sitting on in the Captain’s office seemed clean enough. 

“Can you tell me your name?” A detective with dark hair tied up in a severe bun sat on the other end of the couch from him, a notepad resting on one of her legs. “You’re not in any trouble, you know that, right?”

Derek shrugged and kept studying the carpet, keeping his eyes away from the woman. He was glad she wasn’t a werewolf. If she was, she’d be able to tell how terrified – and ashamed – he was right now. He picked at a loose string on the jeans, shifting slightly. The pants were okay for standing around in, sitting in them got uncomfortable.

He hadn’t expected to _have them on_ for this long. “How about the man who was with you? Can you tell me his name?” 

Derek shook his head. That, at least, wasn’t a lie. “I don’t ask– I don’t know his name.” 

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the detective scratch something on the paper. His heart sank. He’d probably just admitted to what he’d been doing because _again_ he didn’t know when to keep his mouth shut.

“Is this the first time you’ve done something like this?” the detective asked. Her tone had gone soft, almost pitying. Derek hated it.

Derek finally looked up at her. “I just want to go home. If I’m not under arrest, why am I here?”

“You’re here because you’re a victim, sweetheart.” 

Derek blinked, looking across the room at a black filing cabinet in the corner of the office, a family photo rested atop it. “A victim of what?” he asked, barely louder than an exhale. 

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.” She followed his gaze. “I have a son about your age, you know. His name is Alex.” 

Derek nodded. He wasn’t sure what response she’d expected out of him.

“I’m sure that if your mom knew what had happened tonight, she’d be scared for you, just like I’d be if it was Alex.”

“My mom is dead,” Derek deadpanned, turning to the detective. Her eyes widened, a carefully crafted facade of caring and connection shattered by the unexpected information. “So, we’ll never know.” 

Talia Hale, renowned, respected alpha, mother of five and defender of Beacon Hills would _absolutely_ be horrified to learn that the police had arrested a fifty year old man trying to buy sex from her eldest son. But, it didn’t really matter what she thought anymore. She was dead. 

She was dead because of _him_.

“Who were you going to go home to, then?” The detective had recovered from her shock. 

“My sister,” Derek replied, folding his hands in his lap. He turned just his head without turning his body, already sick of the pity he could smell on the detective. “I don’t want to press charges. I’m not a victim.”

“Can you at least tell me how old you are?”

Derek rolled his eyes. “I’m seventeen.” 

One side of the detective’s lips quirked up. “By default you’re a victim.”

“You can’t make me press charges.”

“No, but if he’s done this to you, he’s done it to other people like you.” 

“Paid them for a service?” Derek said, dragging in a breath and scrubbing his hands over his face. “He was going to pay me. He wasn’t going to hurt me.” He very likely couldn’t have, even if he’d tried. There were perks to being a werewolf after all. “He was going to have sex with me, and then I’d get to bring a few hundred home to my sister. Thanks to you all, now, none of that is going to happen.” Derek clenched his hands into fists and set them on his thighs. “I want to go home. So, if I’m not under arrest, let me go.”

The detective sighed, scent shifting from pity and sadness to slightly annoyed. “I’ll go talk to the captain and see what she says.” She held out the notepad to him. “Can you write down your sister’s name and phone number? Because you’re a minor we can’t just let you walk out of here.” 

Derek narrowed his eyes but took the paper, scrawling ‘Laura H.’ followed by her phone number and handing it back to the officer who clicked her tongue as she read it.

The detective and the captain spoke in hushed voices, but with only a single wall between them and Derek, he could hear every word. “ _He’s not going to press charges?_ ” _“If you put him on the stand he’ll admit to the prostitution in a heartbeat.” “Seventeen...”_

Derek rested his head back against the top of the couch, letting his eyes fall closed. If he was lucky, maybe he could tune out the detective when she called his sister. That was a conversation he was not interested in hearing.

\--

Laura didn’t get a lot of quiet time anymore. She was working a lot, partially to kill the time and partially because she couldn’t quite bring herself to touch the fortune they had in the bank. Some of it was genuinely family money, and that part of the family fortune was being used to support her Uncle Peter back in Beacon hills. 

But the life and homeowners insurance payments? Those settlements turned Laura’s stomach. She couldn’t quite bring herself to touch the money, even a year away from the house fire, all of it sat aside in a bank account waiting for someone more adult-y to make decisions about. 

Except, Laura realized as she entered the empty apartment, there was no one more adulty. She was it. It was just her and Derek. “Der?” she called out, unhopeful, letting out a long sigh and dropping the bag of cheap Chinese food she’d picked up on her way home onto the table. 

Derek was never home at this time of night. Laura wasn’t entirely sure what her little brother did while he was out. She’d asked once, but it had ended in a screaming match that ended when Derek stopped and turned his back to her, whispering: “You may be my alpha, but you’re not mom,” and then retreating into his bedroom for the remainder of the time Laura had been home that day.

Laura kicked the chair away from the table and dropped into it, reaching up to tug her hair out of its hair tie and then run her hands into it, scratching at her scalp. She looked up with a yawn, glancing around the cold, sterile, sparsely decorated apartment, loneliness burning in her chest.

All she had left in this world was a mostly catatonic uncle and her brother, and she was doing such a shit job of being a sister that she was on the verge of pushing Derek away. She just...didn’t know how to fix it.

She’d just used a claw to slice the knot - always tied impossibly tight - on the bag of food when her phone rang. She glanced at the clock and then fished it out of her pocket. The number wasn’t in her contacts. She had given her number out to a few people at work but largely, nobody really called her.

Hesitantly she answered it: “Hello?”

“Is this Laura H.?”

“Hale. Yes.” 

“Hi Laura. My name is Detective Lynne Brooks of the New York Police Department. I’m sorry to call you so late at night.”

Laura frowned. “It’s no problem.” 

“Laura, I’m at the 8th precinct and I have your brother here. He’s refused to give us his name but he did give us yours.”

 _Derek_. Panic raced through Laura’s veins. She needed to get a lawyer. How did she even find a lawyer? God, she needed an adultier-adult. Oh no, what if he’d somehow exposed them? “Whatever he did I’m so sorry –”

“Ms. Hale, your brother isn’t in any trouble,” the detective said, her tone soft. Laura rested back against the kitchen chair, letting herself take the first deep breath since she’d answered the phone. “He’s a victim.”

Laura nearly cracked her phone and her vision took on a red haze. “What?” she asked carefully.

“He’s fine, physically. It would probably be better if we didn’t discuss this over the phone. Could you come down to the station?” 

Laura glanced sadly at the bag of food. “I’m on my way.”

\--

Derek heard Laura arrive, smelling her telltale blend of nervous energy and the unmistakable scent of _Alpha_. The detective - _Lynne Brooks_ \- spoke with her and someone else who Derek hadn’t caught the name of for a while, just out of range for Derek to make out. He was glad for that. He didn’t need to hear Laura’s reaction to that particular news. 

When he heard the telltale sound of footsteps headed in his direction, it was probably for the best that there _wasn’t_ a window in this office, or he’d have tried to barrel head first out of it.

Derek glanced up at the door to the office when it opened and then immediately looked away, knowing that, unlike the detectives, Laura would be able to smell the _other_ men he’d been with that night, and his shame on top of it all. “I’m sorry,” he said in the most even voice he could manage. 

He was sorry for so many things. He was sorry for killing Paige. He was sorry he’d been stupid and young and naive and trusted Kate Argent. He was sorry that she’d killed their family. He was sorry that Laura now had to put up with his bullshit. He was sorry that _he’d survived_. 

“Derek.” Derek was fairly sure that he could hear the sound of Laura’s heart breaking (again, shattering into its millionth piece _because of him_ ) underneath his name. 

Suddenly the couch next to him sank and he found himself buried in Laura’s arms, his face pressed into the curve of her shoulder and neck. The scent, sound, and feel of his alpha surrounded him, and the hug was the gentlest anyone had touched him in weeks. Derek refused to cry in front of the detectives or Laura, so he sucked in a long breath and blinked tears back. 

“You don’t need to be sorry, Derek.” Laura whispered. “Not for anything, okay? Listen to me.” Laura pulled away but she still gripped Derek by his shoulders, staring at him. “None of this is your fault. None of it. You did not light the fire, okay?”

Derek scoffed and looked away, keenly aware of the detectives. “I don’t … can I leave now?” He asked, looking up at Detective Brooks and the other woman he hadn’t noticed before.

It was the second person who stepped forward, with a small, kind smile. “Derek, my name is Anne. I’m a social worker. Detective Brooks asked me to come talk to you.”

“Not interested,” Derek said flatly, eyes narrowed.

She didn’t seem surprised at his answer, simply nodding and holding out a card. “If you change your mind about pressing charges, give me a call. Or if there’s anything else you need. Counselling services, career guidance. There are people who can help you, Derek.”

Derek pulled away from his sister and stood up, shifting as discreetly as he could to rearrange his terrible choice of pants and heading out of the office without taking the card. He didn’t need _help,_ he needed to go home and go to bed.

“We’ll be in touch if anything changes,” he heard Laura say. He rolled his eyes but hurried out of the precinct, ignoring what felt like every pair of eyes in the station as he went.

Maybe he deserved this part too. He deserved everyone to know what he was. He was a whore, a slut, useless. It was attention that he’d wanted wasn’t it? Attention from Kate.

Attention that got his entire family killed.

\--

Laura wished she knew the right words to use to make everything better. Her mom would know. Talia had always known the right thing to do, the right words to say. Laura liked to imagine that one day she’d be half the woman – a quarter of the alpha – that her mother had been. She knew it was a high bar to achieve.

She’d never felt further from that goal than watching Derek walk, shoulders hunched, arms wrapped around his chest, dressed in what she suspected were her jeans and a skin-tight see-thru tank top. 

“Der?” she asked quietly. “Derek, we need to talk about this.”

The laugh that left Derek’s lips would haunt Laura’s nightmares, she was sure. It sounded hollow, broken. “Need to discuss that I’m a whore?” he asked, his voice matching her tone, soft. _Terrifying._

“I don’t care that you were doing it, Der. I care _why_.” 

Derek turned around, and for the first time in a long time – fuck, how long had it been really? – there were tears in his haze eyes. “Why _wouldn’t_ I?” he spat. “It’s what I am, Laur.” 

Laura cocked her head to the side. “I don’t...where is this coming from? Who told you this, Derek?” 

“It’s all I’m good for. Sex and getting our family killed.”

“You didn’t get our family killed,” Laura said for what felt like the hundredth time. “You aren’t to blame for a _house fire_ for fuck’s sake.”

“I am when Kate Argent set it,” Derek whispered, his eyes on the ground. “I am when I told her about the tunnels. I am when I _had sex with her_.”

Laura’s heart dropped into her stomach and she watched as a single tear rolled down Derek’s nose. She could see the clench of his jaw as he fought to hold back his own emotions. Anger flared in her gut, but she tamped it down because she could be angry later. She could seek revenge later. She could try and make _sense_ of anything Derek had just said later. Right now, Derek needed her. 

“Even if you’re right, and it wasn’t an electrical fire, you still _matter_. Even if you’re right, and Kate Argent set it, you’re still my _brother._ ” She stepped forward and reached out a hand carefully, resting it on his shoulder. “You’re not only good for sex and getting our family killed. I know the last year has been rough. Clearly, I owe you an apology.”

“What do _you_ have to be sorry for?”

“Because, somehow, I missed all of this. The guilt, the sex work. I missed all of it. It’s my job to be your sister. It’s my job to take care of you. I know I’m not mom” – her voice broke on the word – “but I’m still here, okay? And whatever you think happened, Derek, it’s _not your fault_ okay? Just like Kate. You’re a kid.” 

Derek looked up at her, his eyes tear-bright and shiny lines across his cheeks. “I just wanted to be useful,” he said. “I’ve cost you so much already.”

Laura tugged Derek into her arms. He was taller than her now, but he folded against her, his face in the crook of her shoulder and his arms finding their way around her waist. “You just need to be Derek,” she said, with as much confidence as she could muster. “Just….be a kid while you still can be.” She ran a hand up and down the length of his shaking back. “I love you, little brother. I’m still here, okay. You still have me.”

Laura wasn’t sure, but she might have heard him whisper a: “Love you too,” between sobs. She just stood there, holding him and stroking his back, biting back tears of her own as she did. 

She’d let herself break tomorrow, she promised. Today, Derek needed her. 


End file.
